Diesel is seeing a huge surge in demand, and ExxonMobil says that jump will eventually lead the fuel to become the number one choice for transportation worldwide in just seven years. The move away from gasoline is being propelled by an increase in light-duty engine efficiency and an expansion in commercial transportation globally. All told, diesel represents some 70 percent of all growth in transportation fuel demand through 2040. That's according to Outlook For Energy: A View to 2040, a report by ExxonMobil.

While the company predicts gasoline demand will stay fairly flat for the next few decades, the diesel-powered heavy duty vehicle segment is expected to swell by 65 percent over the next 27 years. Meanwhile, developing nations will experience an 80 percent increase in commercial transportation.

Where, exactly, do hybrids fit into this equation? ExxonMobil projects the cars will become less expensive by 2025, which should precipitate a jump in popularity. Full hybrids will make up about 40 percent of the global vehicle fleet by 2040, though electric and plug-in hybrids will still be just five percent of the market by that time. You can take a look at the full report here.

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When you process a barrel of oil. right now you get about 19 gal. of gas and 10 gallons of diesel. You can cheat that around a little bit. But when you make one you make the other.
The high demand for gas has created a minor surplus for deisel. If more cars switch to deisel, then gas will be in surplus and its price will be depreciated somewhat. Although something tells me that won\'t be allowed to happen. They\'d pour it down the drain first before they let the price fall on gas.

When it was mandated that the level of sulfur in diesel had to be lowered, the oil companies justified the increased price at the pump as due to the cost of modifications of the refineries for sulfur removal. As sulfur removal was already a part of the refining process, in many cases, these modifications were just upgrades to the processes already in place for sulfur removal in the refining stream. The upgrades have been paid for many times over, but don't expect them to drop prices out of sheer benevolence. All that sulfur they remove, they turn around and sell it off to other industries. This is done with several of the waste by-products generated by the refining process. As the increased costs to shipping and transportation gets passed on to consumers, we are all essentially paying for the privilege of generating larger market share in an additional revenue stream for the oil companies.

Diesel fuel costs more because of the anti-pollution additives needed to make it "clean diesel". Diesel is cheaper to refine, but to make it burn cleaner with less polluting molicules it requires more additives which are expensive.

I travel overseas regularly and drive fantastic foreign and AMERICAN branded cars with diesel engines. Why will the American car manufacturers not bring their diesel versions to the US? Our entire fleet of pick up trucks are diesel. They conmtinue to say that the Americans don't want diesel when there are none to choose from. Try to go and find a diesel Volkswagon on the lot! When you are lucky enough to find one, you will pay sticker or above to get it. If Exxon is right and I think they are, why would our car industry want to be dead last to the market. The American diesels in Europe are fantastic. I would love to buy one here. I'll keep buying Volkswagon or Mercedes diesels until the US wises up.

They don't bring their European light duty passenger car diesels to the US because Tier 1-D and Tier 2 emissions standards in the US have been much more strict compared to Euro3, Euro4, and Euro5 standards during the same time-frame.
The upcoming Euro6 emissions standard will be very similar to US Tier 2 Bin 5. This may be the first chance for US car makers to literally sell the exact same diesel vehicles in the US as they sell in Europe without having to add additional emissions equipment for the US market.

ExxonMobil is going to have to convince our government to lower taxes so our diesel doesn't cost way more then regular fuel. Then they are going to have to convince auto makers to manufacture diesel engines in the US so they don't cost such a premium over a regular gasoline engine. As of now, GM makes its first US diesel in forever and it cost more then a a Prius with all those batteries, extra drive train and everything.
If the cost of diesel fuel and engines came down, then we would just have diesel hybrids that got over 100MPG. Big oil wouldn't want that.

Anonymous

2 Years Ago

Diesel emission controls have alot to do with the big in crease in demand for diesel fuel. New diesels aren't what they used to be. I had an old 5.9L 12 valve Cummins diesel in a regular cab Dodge with a manual trans. If I stayed the speed limit, I could get as much as 30 mpg out that thing. My current truck is a 2010 Ford with a 6.4L powerstroke. If I'm lucky, I can get 16ish mpg on the highway with it unloaded. That's BEFORE the DPF goes into regen cycle. It just has a terrible love for fuel.

Yup, the 6.4 sucks. The Cummins 6.7 CRTD isn't much better. The new DEF trucks are getting better mileage overall, but you'll never see 30 MPG in the newer DEF running pickups...and you'll also have to add DEF! So the trucks will have a terrible love for your money. Just imagine what truckers are dealing with. The cost of running has put many of them out of business.

Dude, DEF fluid is like $1.50/gal. With a CAT C15, you use like 1 gallon per every 30 gallons or so of diesel you burn. It is not the end of the world at all. And the clean diesels do get more power. They can tweak the fuel systems for more power without fear of violating smoking regulations because the DPF catches everything.

Keep in mind newer heavy duty diesel pickups are also heavier, larger, and a lot more powerful than they used to be.
My '95 Suburban 6.5L diesel made all of 200hp/400ft-lbs tq when new. The new 6.7L Ford diesel makes 400hp/800ft-lbs tq.....Twice As Much!
If you want a more comparable engine, you have to look at the new class of ~3.0l diesels we're starting to get now. The one going in the Ram 1500's makes 240hp/420ft-lbs tq (just slightly more than my old suburban) and supposedly gets around 30mpg highway.

Anonymous

2 Years Ago

@Mack

Let me also add that all this would still cost me less over the life of the vehicle than just buying a 6.7L Ford right out of the box. Without a doubt it wouldn't be as environmentally friendly as these new diesel engines, but that's just the problem. Diesels aren't clean by nature. If you want to clean them up, you slap really complex and expensive emission controls to make them clean. $8,000 more for an engine that runs on a fuel that can as much as $0.70 more is ridiculous. Like I said earlier, diesels aren't what they used to be. If you want clean diesel engines, the emissions controls will take away many benefits of a diesel.

People need to stop ballooning diesel mileage numbers. You're not going to get 30 miles a gallon on the highway with real world driving. That's almost double what many V8 trucks get. No modern diesel gets double the mileage of a similar sized gas engine in the US market, nothing. And what about the 6.4? It doesn't have 800lb-ft of torque, but it gets terrible mileage. They don't return poor mileage because they're powerful, their mileage is so poor because things like diesel particulate filters rob the engines.

In the new crop of diesel vehicles, you shouldn't really smell much. The soot is trapped in a "diesel exhaust filter" which traps something like 95%-99% of soot. The trucks have "diesel exhaust fluid" which converts nitrous oxide to nitrogen and water vapor.

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Paying for the complication of a diesel engine and the price difference makes this a bad purchase unless you need the grunt to pull stumps. Today's direct injection, variable cam, turbo charged, ECU controlled, lighter, down-sized, gasoline engine offers the most for the money .
What you have here is Big Oil PR designed to help them recover their investment in mandated ultra low sulfur diesel. The diesel of today is nothing like your father's diesel car, which was cheaper, burned nasty fuel and lasted longer because that nasty fuel contain toxic compounds that shorted people's lives; but, strangely worked well to extend the life of the engine. That's no longer true.
Talking mileage: the way to go is with a hybrid like the Chevy Volt, not with a diesel.

Sulfur increases the lubricity of fuels, the same way lead did for gasoline.
The best lubricity additive now is biodiesel. One of the major duramax diesel truck forums did actual scientific testing using the SAE test methodology for lubricity. They found that biodiesel was by far the best additive, much better than diesel itself.

More diesel cars will mean that either US refineries will have to find a way to crack crude oil to make more diesel, or there will need to be lots of alternative fuels for diesel engines and jet engines.
Right now all refineries in Europe and the US are operating at max diesel production. Out of every barrel of oil, a certain percent has be refined into gasoline, and a certain percent has to become diesel. You can't refine one barrel into 100% diesel, and some other barrel into 100% gasoline. There are some variances depending upon what equipment the refinery has, what grade of oil, and how much effort is put into maximizing either diesel or gas over the other.
When you max out on one fuel over the other, one fuel becomes the "waste" fuel. By "waste" I mean that it is no longer the main reason to refine the next barrel of oil. The driver of demand for refining more oil is the demand for the primary fuel, which is now diesel. Diesel used to be the "waste" fuel, so its price was lower. Now gas is the "waste" fuel and naturally its price is now lower than diesel.
Higher MPG gas cars between now and 2020 and beyond because of CAFE will make this problem even worse as gasoline cars keep cutting demand.
If these predictions are true, I hope the oil companies either figure out a way to crack for more diesel, or figure out cheap diesel alternatives, like biofuels. Because right now we are headed smack into the diesel fuel cracking wall.

There is one problem with your logic about higher MPG cars \"making it worse\". Oil companies will refine what is under demand and the othe, if any, will become the \"waste fuel\". This may actually result in lower gasoline prices. The other fact to consider is that, although more diesel cars will be on the road, they will also be subject to CAFE, so the demand for diesel should not increase as much as it otherwise would.

By worse, I mean the price difference between gasoline and diesel will grow wider and get worse. The price for diesel will continue to go up faster than the price of gas. I think you and I agree on this, we just have different definitions of what "worse" means.
Diesel cars are a tiny fraction of overall demand for diesel fuel. Passenger car demand for diesel fuel is absolutely dwarfed by OTR trucking, industrial, farming, marine, aircraft, heating oil, military vehicles, trains, construction equipment, etc. Higher CAFE requirements for passenger diesel will not have any real impact on diesel demand.

Anonymous

2 Years Ago

Before people comment...
Will anyone stop to think that gasoline demand will be staying flat because gas engines are becoming more fuel efficient? You have 4 cylinder gas sedans that are getting nearly as much highway mileage as a Jetta TDI. And they do it without costing a fortune to own! You also have hybrids helping slow the demand for gasoline. It's not because the diesel engine is going to replace the gas engine. We have tons of gas engines on our roads, but they're just now using less fuel than before.